


instead of dancing alone i should be dancing with you

by tiltingheartand



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, not K:TGC-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiltingheartand/pseuds/tiltingheartand
Summary: “Do you believe in soulmates, Eggsy?”What the hell?“What the hell?” He turns from where he’d been buttoning up his shirt and stares at Roxy, who’s still leaned against one side of the doorjamb, looking entirely calm and not at all like she’d just asked him something utterly fucking absurd.“Soulmates,” she repeats, with a look on her face that practically shoutsobviously! I just said that!at him. “I’m curious. Do you believe in them?”





	instead of dancing alone i should be dancing with you

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Out of Control" by She Wants Revenge (which is actually, as a whole, not at all appropriate to this fic, but that one line works, so). Several million thanks to Ky and Jory for beta-ing this and being _massive heroes_.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Eggsy?”

What the hell? 

“What the hell?” He turns from where he’d been buttoning up his shirt and stares at Roxy, who’s still leaned against one side of the doorjamb, looking entirely calm and not at all like she’d just asked him something utterly fucking absurd.

“Soulmates,” she repeats, with a look on her face that practically shouts _obviously! I just said that!_ at him. “I’m curious. Do you believe in them?”

He shakes his head sharply once to clear it and goes back to his buttoning, although he doesn’t turn away. She’s going somewhere with this, he’s sure, although _where_ is a completely different issue entirely. “No idea, Rox, never really given it much thought. Even if they are real, there’s supposed to be few enough of ‘em it ain’t really worth thinking about, is it?”

“Few enough people still means some people, doesn’t it?” 

He blinks. Then he sits on the edge of his bed and starts putting his socks on. “I guess you’re right, sure, but like I said. How many people in this world, now? Odds’d be pretty fuckin’ low.” 

He’s pretty sure he hears her say _ugh_ under her breath, and then half a second later she’s grabbing something – not the picture of his dad, but the frame next to it – and walking out of his room.

 

 

It’s not like – everyone’s heard the stories, haven’t they, it’s just something you hear and say “oh, that’s just a myth, it never actually happens”. Like the terribly-named infants nobody will ever say they’ve actually _met_ , or, fuck, Eggsy doesn’t even know. Santa Claus, maybe.

Although he supposes the latter is a poor comparison, because little children really do believe in Santa; he doesn’t think anybody really believes in soulmates. Not actual, real, genuine soulmates, anyway; the word gets thrown around a lot, yeah, but that hardly means anything. “Oh, they’re soulmates, can you believe it?” or “I think I found my soulmate, I really do”. 

It doesn’t come up a lot around Eggsy, which is good, because despite being on the wrong side of thirty-five, he still has to keep himself from saying “oh yeah? then how come you ain’t stopped aging yet?” or something along those lines every other time he hears someone say it.

And he _absolutely_ refuses to let on to other people that sometimes he still wants to believe. Soulmates, _real_ soulmates, they don’t exist, he knows that. People who meet their soulmate and then their aging grinds to an abrupt halt, that minute/hour/day, there’s no way those exist. Doesn’t matter how rare the stories he’s heard say they are – “oh, very rare, maybe one or two a century if that, but it’s real, I promise you” – and how much he wants it to be true. 

 

 

“Eggsy, come here a second, okay?” Across the hall, Roxy is standing in the toilet he tends to think of as his, even though technically it's just the one upstairs that isn't in someone's bedroom. He sees, once he's standing next to her in front of the mirror, that she's got a picture frame in one hand, and raises an eyebrow silently. 

She lifts it so they can both see the photo inside – he really likes that picture, actually, and when his mum had given him some frames and a heavy-handed suggestion to maybe put some family photos up or something, that was one of the first ones he thought of. 

“This was what, ten years ago?” she says, looking down at it still, half-smiling. 

He nods. “Right after Harry got Arthur. I think you were the one who took it, actually.” 

She had been. The night after Harry had officially been voted in – and despite what Eggsy had been telling him, and the facade of more-or-less-indifference, Eggsy had still been able to see how terrified Harry had been that Arthur would go to someone else (who, Harry? who else?) and they’d have no use for him anymore – a bunch of them had dinner at some hole in the wall. Towards the end, she’d dragged Merlin over to Eggsy and Harry’s side of the table and announced that they would be taking pictures. “For the occasion!” Most of them had ended up awful, which wasn't a surprise, but she'd had her phone out right when she made her proclamation and managed to take one right when the look on Harry’s face went from amused calm to distinct alarm, Eggsy next to him half a second before he'd started laughing at Harry, and Merlin looking deeply resigned to whatever was happening. 

That wasn't the one he'd ended up printing out, though, as much as he likes it; the one she's got in her hands was from a few minutes later, after Harry had calmed down and Merlin had managed to crack an actual smile. Harry had just asked him something under his breath, and Eggsy had started laughing again, and he hadn't realized until later but Harry had the most absurdly self-satisfied look on his face. 

“Eggsy.” He sees her move out of the corner of his eye, and when he turns his head to look properly she’s looking at him in the mirror. “Now, I don’t want any best-mate-bullshit response here; genuine question, genuine answer, all right?”

“... yeah,” he says, trying not to sound quite as baffled as he’s feeling, because where the hell is this going?

“Look at the two of us, right here, right now,” Roxy says, and he does, meeting her eyes in the mirror for a few seconds before looking at the rest of her, then himself. Not that he knows what he’s looking for. “Now look at the picture,” she says, handing it over; when he looks up she shakes her head. “ _Really_ look, Eggsy.”

Still not a clue what he’s looking for, and she’s being less than helpful, but whatever. They’re all glowingly happy. He remembers he fell asleep that night with a grin on his face. (He was also _maybe_ a little tipsy. Nowhere near drunk, but tipsy.)

After he’s guessing enough time has elapsed, he looks back up again, shrugging. “Rox, I have no idea what you want me to see, here. Little help?”

“Between then and now,” she says, “do I look different? Bearing in mind what I said, and the fact that I know where you sleep.”

He bites back the instinctual no! that wants to come out, he knows she’s serious about threats like that, but for the moment he’s at a loss. “I – guess you look older? It’s been ten years, that happens. Your face is maybe a little different, hair’s a bit shorter now.”

“Well that’s something, I suppose,” she says, rolling her eyes a bit. “Merlin? I know he isn’t here, but you just saw him earlier.”

“Head’s a little shinier, he’s shaving less of his hair away. Few more lines around his eyes. I think his glasses might be prescription now.”

She nods, takes half a step closer to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Better. You know how sometimes people say that someone they know, or a celebrity or something, is ageless? ‘Oh, that person just doesn’t age!’ Things like that?”

He nods. 

“Now look at yourself in the mirror, Eggsy. Not how you’ve got your hair, not your clothes, _you_.”

The fuck? 

The look on her face says she’s serious, though, so he does as she asks, not that he’s really seeing anything unusual. Same face he sees every day. Looks a little different without his hair parted and combed down, maybe, but still: just a face.

“All right. Now look at you in the photograph,” she says, hand on his shoulder tightening slightly for some reason. 

Same result: just his face, a moment before he’s about to start laughing. He was leaning into Harry’s space a bit, just a hair closer to him than anyone else. He still has no idea where she’s going with this, so he looks back up at the two of them in the mirror and shrugs.

She shakes her head, exhaling harshly through her nose. “Point out the differences between then-you and now-you, Eggsy. Real differences, like you said about me and Merlin. Anything at all.”

He looks back down again, opens his mouth to give her an answer – he knows he’s changed, it’s been ten years, shouldn’t be that hard to tell her at least one or two – but then he sees. Realizes what she’s been practically shouting at him.

“How about Harry? You saw him just after you saw Merlin. Anything?”

Whether or not he wants to believe – in the broad sense, in the suddenly incredibly specific sense, in any way at all – there’s still a part of him shrieking bloody murder, telling him _this shit don’t happen, mate_ , but as he studies Harry’s face, fails to find a single change anywhere, it starts getting quieter.

He looks up and meets Roxy’s eyes in the mirror. He thinks maybe he’s gone pale. Opens his mouth again to say something, _anything_ , and can’t think of a single thing to say. 

 

 

The thing is that he hadn’t really meant to move in with Harry, really, but now he’s been here so long he can’t imagine being anywhere else.

After – well. After. After Harry was finally back in the right country, in the right city, back in his home with all the dead insects and the taxidermied bloody dog. Eggsy made sure that Harry was set up at home, made sure Harry had his number, and went back to stay with his mum and sister in their new flat for a while until he could find a place of his own.

It took three weeks before he actually told anybody how shit the sleep he’d been getting was, if he managed to sleep; it only took two days after that for Merlin to walk up to him at lunch, say “Harry’s barely sleeping either, lad, just talk to him,” and then walk away before Eggsy could respond.

(Not that he could’ve responded, even if he’d had the chance. He’d already given up wondering how Merlin found things out, but it still took him by surprise.)

Which, well, it was hardly like they hadn’t _been_ talking as it was, they talked every day when they could, but considering how long it took for him to tell Roxy he can imagine how difficult Harry must have found it to say anything himself. 

So he ended up sleeping in Harry’s guest room, because Harry had confessed that he thought that maybe he just couldn’t stand being alone in his house for the time being, and Eggsy had felt terrible about how often he’d been waking his mum or sister by accident, and he wasn’t sure if it was the change in scenery or the return to Harry’s guest room or something else entirely, but that night he’d slept better than he had in literal months, and so had Harry, as it turned out. 

(Granted, he heard Harry snoring through their shared wall, but it had been unexpectedly comforting, in its way.)

He’d only meant for it to last a week or two, until they’d both recovered some, but the time he’d meant to leave came and went, and instead of leaving he just. Stayed. And Harry never mentioned it, never said “are you going to be finding lodging of your own, my dear?” In fact, two months later, he’d said the opposite – “You know, Eggsy, you may as well just bring the rest of your things over,” he’d said one day at lunch, and then, misinterpreting Eggsy’s stunned silence, “You needn’t if you don’t want to, of course. I just thought you might find it simpler.”

And – well. Harry had a point.

 

 

According to Merlin, twenty-five years ago there had been a genuine reason for this party – the Annual Fishbowl Party, held the second Friday of September every year, no fishbowls in sight a single time Eggsy’s been able to attend – but apparently he never knew it, and neither did anyone else still around now who’d been around then. He just says “I’m told there was a good reason indeed” and then walks away.

Honestly, at this point Eggsy’s half-convinced they’re all taking the piss and just want to have a party for no reason, all the intrigue only involved because half the people who started the tradition were bloody drama queens of one kind or another.

Still, he can’t say it’s not a great party, because it is. It’s at HQ, in one of the four ballrooms that seem to serve no other actual purpose; usually the same one, actually, the one with doors that open to the grounds outside so people can go in and out as they want, assuming the weather’s cooperating. Drinks, good food, and a chance to pester his colleagues into dancing with him. Pretty decent combination all around, honestly.

When he and Roxy get there – together, which had been why he _thought_ she’d come by his place, before she went and started the conversation he can’t get out of his head now – she leans over and kisses his cheek, and then crosses to the other side of the ballroom to join a conversation with a few handlers and Bors, and suddenly he feels – well. Adrift, maybe. He’d had plans to enjoy the evening, and now he doesn’t know what to do.

Enjoy the evening, he thinks, snorting softly and going to get a glass of something bright blue from the bar. Sure. That’ll work. 

Five minutes later and he’s on one of the edges of the room, helping hold up the wall. Few enough people still means some people, he hears Roxy say. Point out the differences. 

Eggsy really hates people sneaking up on him, although it’s become vanishingly rare the last few years. Still, when he looks up a minute or two later and realizes Harry’s standing next to him he has to keep very hard from jumping.

“Evening, Eggsy,” Harry says, only acknowledging Eggsy’s reaction with a slightly larger smile than usual. “Glad to see the two of you made it unharmed.”

“Same to you,” Eggsy says, half on autopilot. “Rox told me Merlin promised her he’d drag you out of your office in time for this. Still wasn’t sure you’d show.”

“Paperwork waits for no one, dearest.” Harry shrugs a shoulder, leaning the upper portion of his body toward Eggsy slightly as he speaks. “Still, I knew I’d have at least three people out for my blood if I didn’t so much as make an appearance, so here I am.”

“Out for your blood is right, mate,” Eggsy says, trying not to laugh. Harry’s said the same thing for the last six years – he’d had plans to do paperwork all evening, but someone (the specific person changes from year to year) had dragged him out of his office and down here instead. The second year he tried it, Eggsy studied him for a few seconds, realized that what Harry was saying was nearly line-for-line the same as what he’d said the previous year, came to the conclusion that this was Harry Hart actually enjoying himself, and grinned for the next twenty-five minutes.

A comfortable silence falls between them, each with a drink in one hand, watching the rest of the room. Eggsy’s hyper-aware, though, of all the places Harry’s body and his are so, so close to touching, worries briefly that he’s going to do something and fuck it all up. Then he takes a deep breath and asks himself: if that conversation earlier hadn’t happened, if Roxy had just come to get him with no earth-shattering conversations to follow, what would he be doing now? 

When he tries to figure it out, thinks back and remembers the other events like this he’s been to, even the smaller ones where it’s him and Harry and maybe twenty other people instead of the however many there are here, even the ones where it’s him and Harry and Roxy and Merlin out for one of the few times someone’s been able to convince Merlin to leave the department in someone else’s hands, he realizes: it doesn’t matter why they’re getting together. He’s always elated to see Harry, always loves being in his space and passing rude remarks back and forth, leaning over to knock Harry’s shoulder with his own or just occupy the same few cubic feet of air. 

Which is precisely how he’d felt today, aside from the confused anxiety that was sitting on top of everything else. 

So he closes his eyes briefly, says _fuck it_ very clearly in his mind, opens his eyes back up, and leans his head in Harry’s direction, eyes on everyone else. “Please tell me Janet isn’t trying to chat up that bloke she’s with,” he says, a bit quieter than he had been.

Harry leans in a bit more – unintentional, possibly, considering the way he matches Eggsy’s volume and tone – and finds the couple in question with his eyes.

Then he chokes on his drink, and Eggsy gives himself a high-five.

“I am desperately hopeful that I have misremembered his name,” Harry says, face so devoid of emotion Eggsy knows he’s trying to keep from laughing.

“Nope,” Eggsy says, and turns his head to grin at Harry. “Met him twice now. His name is _definitely_ Bradley.” 

When Harry smiles – in general, maybe, or maybe it’s just at him and Eggsy’s shit at noticing – his entire face lights up. Eggsy could see that face every day for the rest of his life and not get tired of it. “At least it’s better than Wendy and Peter,” says Harry, and this time it’s Eggsy who chokes on his drink.

 

 

When he thinks about it, he realizes with some surprise that it’s been almost a year and a half since he’s brought anyone – _anyone_ – home with him. And even longer since he’d actually been genuinely dating someone; the last time he remembers that happening had been a bit more than two years ago, and had lasted approximately six weeks, until he found out that Rick had a thing for feet that passed right through “normal thing directed at an unusual body part” and straight into “no I am not getting you off with my feet”. The one before that, Dahlia, had lasted seven months, until he picked her up for dinner one day and she broke up with him on the way – in the weirdest goddamn way possible, it was like she was trying not to but couldn’t help it, and he had had _no_ idea what to do with it – and then proceeded to enjoy dinner with him that night anyway.

(Actually, no: the absolutely bloody weirdest thing about _that_ , if he’s honest with himself, is that breakup notwithstanding dinner hadn’t felt any different. So maybe she’d made the right decision? Inexplicable hesitation aside? Really he still hasn’t a clue so he just tries not to think about her much.)

After Rick, he’d gone out a few times, brought someone home with him or gone to theirs occasionally, but nothing past that. He doesn’t even remember, now, why he’d stopped; it had just happened while he wasn’t paying attention.

Clearly, if it’s taken him a year and a half to notice.

He remembers thinking, at one point, how it all sort of seemed pointless after a while. He was home for little enough time as it was, really; why bother spending the time he had out with people he didn’t even know, doing something that wasn’t guaranteed to be enjoyable anyway, when he could just do something with one of his friends? Or with Harry, of course – Harry, who fell into a different category than “friends”, and who he’d always enjoy his time with.

 _Christ_.

And – no, Harry hasn’t brought anyone home in at least as long either, has he. Yeah, he could probably be doing it while Eggsy was gone, but that seemed an awful lot of care to be taking for a subterfuge that wouldn’t accomplish anything. Not like Eggsy didn’t know it was happening, when it had been, but it upset him about as much as it did Harry when the situations were reversed, which was to say: not at all. Harry was well fit, after all, he’d have to have never laid eyes on him even once to know that because it was true every single time he saw Harry. He _ought_ to be going and getting himself laid, honestly.

But he hadn’t been. Eggsy wonders if it had been accidental, like in his case, or if Harry had done it by design. And if it had been intentional, why? 

This is definitely a thing he doesn’t want to ask, though – “Hey Harry, how come you stopped pulling?” was a conversation starter he honestly didn’t want to use at any point in the future. 

As much as he wants to know. 

 

 

“Oi, Rox,” Eggsy says, poking his head through her office doorway and then walking through it when he sees she’s not busy. Barely busy, anyway. She can put her paperwork on hold for ten minutes, he’s decided, so he closes the door behind himself and gets comfortable in the chair in front of her desk.

“As soon as I can think of an appropriate response, I am going to get you back for my ringtone,” she says, not even looking up at him.

He grins at her anyway, sings “ _Rooooox_ anne” under his breath, and when she finally looks up at him, expression entirely flat, he shrugs.

She sets her pen down silently, folds her hands on her desk, and keeps looking at him in the exact same way until he feels himself starting to fidget. Then, finally, she raises an eyebrow.

“– look, Rox, I can see why you might’ve thought so, but I’m absolutely positive Harry and I ain’t soulmates,” he says, eventually.

“Define _absolutely positive_ ,” she says. “Because I have to say, Eggsy, I know I’m not actually privy to all your inner workings, but it seems fairly obvious to me that you are.”

That’s – well. He hasn’t given any thought to how she reached the conclusion in the first place until _right now_ , at which point he thinks _oh, fuck me_ , and then decides to put that aside for the moment. “When I met Harry I was six,” he says, instead, and gestures down at himself. “Clearly not six.”

“If you had met him when you were six and _he_ was six, how do you think that would have worked out?”

He blinks. “I dunno, actually.”

She gives him a _look_ and settles back a bit in her chair. “From what Merlin and I have been able to figure, as far as anyone can trust anything beyond the bones of the stories, meeting before you both hit somewhere between puberty and adulthood doesn’t really count. Imagine, really, two people meeting at six and never growing older.”

Actually Eggsy doesn’t have a response for that, aside from _Merlin? **Merlin**?_ It's reasonable – as much as _any_ of this is bloody reasonable – and he’s trying to remember his other objections when the _look_ is replaced by a smile which he finds significantly more alarming.

“Also, that’s an absolute last-ditch effort at disproving it, you know,” Roxy says. 

Instead of trying to think of a response to _that_ Eggsy just leaves.

 

 

She’s fucking _right_ , is the thing. Because when he’d started _really_ thinking about it, he realized how much time he and Harry spend together, even if they’re both doing other things by themselves. How much he and Harry _touch_ , every single day – shoulders knocking together, a squeeze of a hand, arms around shoulders or toes under thighs or Harry’s hand, just at the small of his back, settling Eggsy in a way he hadn’t really noticed before. 

He doesn’t necessarily trust _everyone_ at Kingsman with his life, even though that’s probably not what he ought to say. The absolute shortest list, right now, consists of three names: Harry, Roxy, and Merlin. Which is fine, which makes sense – he has to trust Merlin, and he and Roxy will always have each others’ backs, whether their missions are partnering them up or they’re on opposite sides of the globe, and he definitely has to trust Arthur. 

(Maybe it’s not a _definitely_ , considering what had happened with the last one, but he’s a lot more comfortable being able to say he trusts Arthur with his life than he would be otherwise.)

That, however, is a blatant lie and he kind of hates himself a bit for letting it try and follow itself through, because yeah, all three of them are on that short list, but Harry’s at the very top and there’s a massive space between his name and the other two names. He’s known them all for more than a decade now; he loves Roxy, and Merlin’s “the guv’nor!” as he will be until the day Eggsy dies, entirely because he knows how much it irritates him. But it’ll always be Harry, because –

Well. Because. Which he guesses is something he should have maybe noticed before. Some spy he is.

 

 

In the end, despite Eggsy having made grand plans and then discarding them, having made a bit less grand plans and discarding _them_ , and telling himself he’s going to just tell Harry they need to have a serious discussion and bringing it up then, none of that happens. In the end, one night they’re sitting on Harry’s sofa, watching a heist show and heckling it cheerfully, and it just. Slips out.

“Hey Harry,” Eggsy says, to get his attention, and Harry makes a _hmm?_ noise from the other end of the sofa. “Do you believe in soulmates?” 

Which was _really_ not what he’d been planning on asking, ten seconds ago, but it’s out there now, isn’t it. 

When they’d made themselves comfortable earlier that night, Eggsy had planted his back against the armrest and shoved his toes under Harry’s thigh, and Harry had settled a hand on top of one of Eggsy’s half-bent knees. Now, now that he’s gone and opened his damn mouth, he can see the tension in Harry’s arm, can almost feel how he’s trying not to let the hand get any tighter, but then Harry asks, “Literal or figurative?” and the tone of his voice is like he’s asking what Eggsy thinks they should do for dinner tonight. Good-natured curiosity, maybe, nothing to suggest that he’s terribly invested in the answer.

“Literal,” Eggsy says. He’s watching Harry’s face now, so he sees him blink once, twice, and then turn so he’s looking back at Eggsy.

“I don’t know; I never really spared them much thought, I suppose,” Harry says, frowning in thought. “I imagine they’re part of the category of things that exists whether or not one believes in them, really.” His tone is the same as it was a moment ago; his face, the white knuckles Eggsy can see where he’s gripping the armrest with his other hand, are busy telling Eggsy that he’s full of shit. “Why?”

Eggsy moves so he’s sitting on his heels on the sofa, bent knees butting up against Harry’s thigh now, and barely resists the urge to lay a hand on that thigh and squeeze gently, just to feel it. “Harry,” he says, instead, reaching over to take the hand that had fallen to the seat cushion in both his own and – fuck, he’s scrapped every single one of his plans and now he has no fucking clue where to go from here. He just looks down at Harry’s hand in his, instead, and wonders if maybe he’d ever be able to forgive himself for shooting Harry with an amnesia dart.

And then he feels Harry’s hand on his cheek, so soft it’s barely there, and when he looks back up Harry’s face is closer than he thinks it was a second ago, and then Harry leans forward and –

 _Kisses him_.

It is absolutely, hands-down, literally the best kiss of his life.

When they break apart a few moments or hours or days later, however long it's actually been, Eggsy can't take his eyes off Harry, and Harry can't seem to take his eyes off Eggsy, and Eggsy wonders how the two of them managed to miss this for so long. 

“You're stuck with me now, you know,” he says, and reaches up to brush the hair back from Harry's forehead, lets his hand rest on Harry's neck. He can feel the pulse underneath his fingers, hears the quiet noise Harry makes when he brushes his thumb over it softly. 

“I rather thought I already was,” Harry says, and Eggsy feels Harry's other hand – resting on his hip, and he has no idea when that happened but he's certainly not complaining – squeeze once. “So please believe me when I say I'd have it absolutely no other way.”

This time when they kiss they meet in the middle, and he didn't think it was possible but this is even better than the last one. He's not sure if it's because Harry Hart is a fantastic bloody kisser or because, yeah, he can admit it, Harry's his fucking _soulmate_ , but he's fine with it either way. 

(He’s pretty sure Roxy and Merlin are going to be insufferable now, though.)

 

 

He’s right. They are.

He doesn’t care. It’s worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> I also live at [tiltingheartand](http://tiltingheartand.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr if anyone wants to come say hi.


End file.
